


Yours, An Admirer

by EachPeachPearPlum



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (also a maybe?), (maybe?) - Freeform, Anonymous Love Notes, Candyfloss fic, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Humor, Love Letters, M/M, Second-Hand Embarrassment, Secret Admirer, Stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-23 13:56:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23079235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EachPeachPearPlum/pseuds/EachPeachPearPlum
Summary: I want to take you somewhere safe, keep you there away from the world and anything that makes you look as exhausted as you have lately. I want to sit you down and make you eat, lie you down in a bed and watch over you while you sleep, wake you up slow and gentle with my hands on your skin.Yours,An admirer“Okay, JARVIS, I need you to tell me who this is from,” Tony instructs, because it’s one thing for someone to bring him a coffee and ask JARVIS not to tell him who it is but whoever left him this was in his workshop, close enough to touch himwhile he was asleepand that is approximately five billion miles from okay.Or: Tony gets an anonymous note, freaks out, and turns to the Avengers for help. Much to Steve's mortification.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 12
Kudos: 216
Collections: Peach’s TSB 2020 works, Tony Stark Bingo 2020





	Yours, An Admirer

**Author's Note:**

> So I read a fic a while back in which Character A received a series of notes from Anonymous, and rather than trying to work out who they were from, A just thought _aww, that's sweet_. I, on the other hand, thought _that's so not how I'd react, why the hell aren't you calling the police???_ and thus this fic was born.
> 
> I want to say a huge thank you to [feyrelay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feyrelay/pseuds/feyrelay) for providing extra creepy ideas when it came to the note, and to [ABrighterDarkness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABrighterDarkness/pseuds/ABrighterDarkness) for the beta. Couldn't have done it without you :)
> 
> You can read this fic in русский [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/9150977) (translation provided by slavkaficus).
> 
> Written for the Tony Stark Bingo:
> 
> Title: Yours, An Admirer  
> Collaborator Name: eachpeachpearplum  
> Card Number: 3027  
> Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23079235  
> Square Filled (Letter/number AND prompt): A5 - Confession in a desperate situation  
> Ship/Main Pairing: Steve/Tony  
> Rating: T  
> Major Tags: Fluff, love letters, secret admirer  
> Summary: Tony gets an anonymous note, freaks out, and turns to the Avengers for help. Much to Steve's mortification.  
> Word Count: 2,900

Tony was tired when he fell asleep, and is every bit as tired when he wakes up again, face down on his workbench. There's a wrench pressing into his cheek, a piece of paper tickling his chin each time he exhales, and the tantalising aroma of fresh, hot coffee filling his nose.

He's reaching for the mug before he's even sat up, peeling his face from the workbench and forcing his spine into something resembling upright (God, he's getting too old to sleep like this, but more often than not the act of going up to bed when he’s tired serves only to wake him up), and is about to take the first sip of coffee when it occurs to him that coffee should not be there. It definitely wasn’t there when he fell asleep, so unless one of his old bots has taught himself a new trick…

“Did DUM-E make this, J?” he asks. “And if he did, am I safe to drink it?”

“DUM-E continues to be wary of the coffee machine, Sir,” JARVIS replies; Tony’s not sure if that’s supposed to be a joke, but either way it doesn’t give him a whole lot of info. “It was brought here for you.”

“By who?” he demands, wary; the ‘shop is supposed to be locked down when he’s asleep, accessible only to Pepper and Rhodey, unless it’s an absolute emergency, in which case the team can ask JARVIS to wake him up and let them in.

“They asked me not to tell you, Sir,” JARVIS answers, which is so not a valid response.

“You what?”

“They asked me not to tell you, Sir,” JARVIS repeats, apparently under the very wrong impression that Tony just didn’t hear him. “I believe the note they left may provide more information.”

“Note?” Tony frowns, then remembers the paper that was tickling his face when he first woke up. He shifts aside the assortment of tools and components that litter his workspace, looking for what is probably the only piece of paper in here and, seriously, who the hell still uses paper in this day and age? That’s just another thing for Tony to be confused and slightly freaked out by, because anyone who knows him knows to just ask JARVIS to pass a message on, there is no reason for _anyone_ to have brought him an actual paper note.

It’s not on the worktable he fell asleep on.

“You making me play _hot-or-cold_ , J?” Tony asks, unease making him sound sharper than usual.

“Not intentionally, Sir,” JARVIS answers. “I would suggest checking _under_ the table.”

Sure enough, when Tony bends down he sees a sheet of A4 lying on the floor, folded in half, the crease pressed into crispness by whoever delivered it. He uses a pair of pliers to pick the paper up, placing it on his workbench and unfolding it slowly, just in case. There shouldn't be any danger from touching it, not when JARVIS scans the air in the whole tower every few minutes and wouldn't let Tony touch anything that might endanger him, but he's still being careful about it.

Eventually, he gets the paper unfolded enough to see neat, blocky writing in blue ballpoint pen, and then to read the words written there.

_I want to take you somewhere safe, keep you there away from the world and anything that makes you look as exhausted as you have lately. I want to sit you down and make you eat, lie you down in a bed and watch over you while you sleep, wake you up slow and gentle with my hands on your skin._

_Yours,_

_An admirer_

“Okay, JARVIS, I need you to tell me who this is from,” Tony instructs, because it’s one thing for someone to bring him a coffee and ask JARVIS not to tell him who it is but whoever left him this was in his workshop, close enough to touch him _while he was asleep_ and that is approximately five billion miles from okay.

“I am unable to provide you with that information, Sir,” JARVIS answers, more than doubling Tony’s current distance from okay.

“Why. Not?”

JARVIS doesn’t answer right away, pausing the way he does when he’s trying to get around his programming in order to disobey Tony’s instructions. Since there’s no reason at all for him to not want to identify the note writer, this has to be something else, and Tony doesn’t know if that’s better or worse.

“They invoked override Alpha-Vexing-Three Nox-Nine-Three-Rubicon, Sir,” JARVIS says apologetically, which, yeah, it’s definitely worse.

See, when he first invited the others to live in the Tower, Tony had explained that JARVIS was everywhere, but that there was an override code they could use to disable his recording and monitoring abilities that would last until they used the reversal code. Natasha had immediately shut down everything on her floor, then removed all of the cameras and every microphone but the one in the third bedroom, and Bruce disabled the ones in his bedroom and bathroom. Steve, on the other hand, only uses the override when he wants privacy but otherwise seems to like having someone to talk to, while Clint and Thor (when he’s on Earth and in the city, which isn’t all that often) don’t seem to care that they share their homes with an omnipresent entity.

There’s other codes, too. Pepper has one, as does Rhodey, but the one JARVIS has recited is the _team’s_ code, and that’s one hell of a problem.

“I need the team down here, JARVIS,” Tony says. “Unless it’s life-or-death, I want them to drop what they’re doing and help with this.”

“Understood, Sir.”

Even if they all head his way immediately, it’ll still take a few minutes for them to get here, and Tony is far too twitchy to wait patiently until they do. He paces the length of the workshop, a holoscreen moving with him as he types.

By the time the elevator arrives and the others pile out, Tony has already disabled the Avenger override code and made a start on setting up individual codes for the team (which is the way he should have done it in the first place, but he was busy and distracted and he took a stupid shortcut that makes working out what’s going on a hell of a lot harder than it should be). He’s still pacing, still twitchy and very close to scared, and the fact that no one gets close to approaching him suggests they’re all picking up on that.

“Tony?” Bruce says cautiously after a moment. “What’s up?”

“I got a note while I was sleeping,” Tony says, gesturing to where the incriminating sheet of paper still rests on his worktable. “JARVIS can’t tell me who it’s from, but whoever dropped it off used the team override code to keep him from saying anything, so before I start an investigation I want to check that it’s not some shitty attempt at a joke from one of you. And, yeah, I’m looking at you, Barton.”

Clint leads the team over to the worktable, his frown and very obvious aversion to touching the note making it clear he’s not the guilty party even before he answers. “Yeah, no. Even my sense of humour isn’t that creepy. Tash?”

Natasha wrinkles her nose, shaking her head.

Tony glances at Bruce, only to immediately dismiss the possibility (even when he’s the Hulk, the darkest parts of himself, he’s never anything close to that cruel or that creepy), and then at Steve, who looks utterly horrified at the mere suggestion that he could be responsible.

He might have preferred it if this was one of his teammates playing a twisted prank on him, but in his heart, Tony never really thought it was that innocuous.

“Right,” he says, pacing again, clenching his hands into fists to keep them from shaking. “Bruce, whoever it was left that coffee, can you check for nasties? J, scan everything for prints, and I want footage of every single time someone’s used that code, I need to know who might have overheard it. Natasha, Clint, if you can do your superspy thing, see what you can dig up, I’d really appreciate it.”

“Um,” Steve says, which, no. Tony does a better job of following orders on the battlefield than anyone could ever have anticipated, at least when they’re Steve’s orders and they actually make sense, but this is Tony’s problem and Steve is going to have to let Tony take charge here.

“Yeah, sure, you’re still the bossman, no questions there, but it’s my creepy stalker and I really ne-”

“It was me,” Steve interrupts.

“It was-” Tony’s brain stalls on the sentence, producing nothing but a very unhelpful _404 Thought Not Found_ for what is probably the first time ever in his life. “What?”

“The note. The coffee. It was me.”

His brain is still giving him a big fat _nope_ in response, so the only action Tony can manage is gaping at Steve in absolute confusion. It doesn’t make sense.

Tony is an actual genius, has never met a problem he can’t solve, given enough time and the opportunity to throw a lot of money at it, but this? Sure, Steve has a sense of humour, even if it took a while for them to figure out when he’s being serious and when he’s having them on, but his sense of humour isn’t this- this _twisted_. He’s just _nice_ , okay, the nicest guy Tony has ever known, and there’s no way he’d ever think trying to scare people is funny.

This doesn’t make any sense.

“Okay,” Natasha says, cutting into Tony’s non-comprehending silence, and for a very brief moment he’s relieved, at least until she rolls her eyes. And not just at Steve, either. She’s rolling her eyes at both of them. “Looks like you don’t need us after all, Tony. We’ll leave you two to it.”

She turns, making for the door without another word, and stranger still is the fact that Bruce follows her without question.

Clint, on the other hand, doesn’t so much as twitch, watching Steve and Tony with the same intense focus he usually reserves for battling aliens or beating strangers in a bar at darts.

“Clint,” Natasha prompts.

Clint pouts, and no man his age should ever look that much like a toddler who has just had his favourite teddy bear taken away from him. “C’mon, Nat,” he wheedles, sounding as pathetic as he looks. “Please?”

“ _Now_ , Barton,” Natasha snaps, her expression that utterly terrifying kind of bland she does so well. Clearly it scares Clint just as much as it does Tony, because he follows her and Bruce from the workshop without further argument.

Which doesn’t make Tony entirely happy, since he’s now left alone with Steve, who doesn’t seem at all willing to meet Tony’s gaze.

“Okay,” Tony says, after several moments of him looking at Steve and Steve looking at absolutely anything other than him. “You want to explain this, Steve? Because I really didn’t think your sense of humour was this disturbing either.”

Steve does a spectacular fish impression for long enough to make Tony feel kind of uncomfortable, and then he gives his head a little shake. He draws himself up to his full height and squares his shoulders, looking for all the world like he’s about to march into battle.

“It wasn’t a joke,” he says.

“It- What?” Tony can count on both hands the number of times he’s been rendered speechless in his lifetime, and far too many of them have been today. “What?”

“It wasn’t a joke,” Steve repeats, still wearing his full-on battleface. “I like you, Tony.”

Tony closes his mouth, teeth clicking together. “Okay…” he says, equal parts surprised and confused, not at all sure what their friendship has to do with Steve writing him an uncharacteristically sinister note. “Okay, sure, that’s good to know. What with the way Howard talked about you and the way everything went on the helicarrier, I was pretty sure we wouldn’t get past the frenemies stage, so I’m just as happy as you are that we’ve made it to being friends, but I have no clue at all how you got from that to this?”

Finally, Steve’s _ready to fight_ posture softens, spine slouching, shoulders slumping, and he’s fidgeting a little, too. Tony wants to believe that's an improvement, but he doesn’t actually think uncomfortable Steve is any better than uptight Steve. Still, he can be patient, particularly since uncomfortable Steve seems like he’s about to offer an explanation.

“I was watching _You’ve Got Mail_ with the others a couple of days ago,” he says, “and afterwards, we got to talking about secret admirers and leaving anonymous notes for the person you love. Thor said he thought it was _a charming tradition_ , Bruce told us he used to put notes in Betty’s lunches, and I thought, maybe…” He pauses, shaking his head a little bit before continuing. “Well, it was a dumb idea. I didn't realise how creepy it would sound. I’m sorry, Tony.”

He sounds oddly repentant, way more than the situation seems to merit, and Tony hurries to reassure him. “Hey, no harm, no foul. It’s all good. Yeah, I panicked for a bit, but it’s not like you’re actually about to hurt anyone, so panic over, right?”

That should be the end of it, Tony thinks, but Steve doesn’t say anything, and Tony really needs to know they’re okay. It was just a weird thing Steve decided to do, no harm done, little to no chance of him doing it again now that he's seen how freaked out Tony was. “Really, don’t worry about it, Steve, okay?”

“Okay,” Steve says, after a ridiculously long pause. He sounds sad, which is possibly even weirder than the repentance. “Thanks, Tony.”

“You're welcome?” Tony answers, more because it's what he's supposed to say than because he has any idea at all why Steve is thanking him.

He's missing something, no doubt about that. If only he had any idea what.

Steve turns to walk away, his shoulders slumped even further, head down. It all seems way too serious a reaction for a joke gone wrong, and-

 _It wasn't a joke_ , Steve said.

 _Leaving anonymous notes for the person you love_ , Steve said.

 _I like you, Tony_ , Steve said, so incredibly earnest, and stupid Tony had taken it as a declaration of friendship.

One day, Tony will figure out how it's possible for him to be off the charts intelligent and also a fucking idiot, but right now a guy who really likes him is walking away under the impression that Tony doesn't like him back and that's just not okay.

Because he's never thought about it, never even entertained the possibility of him and Steve being anything other than friends and colleagues. If anyone had ever asked him, he’d have said they got along better than expected, but that there was nothing more to it than that, and if someone had suggested Steve might want more Tony would have laughed them right out the door. The thought would have been inconceivable, not worth even a moment’s consideration.

He’s definitely considering it now, though, and the idea has a hell of a lot of merit to it.

“Wait!” Tony calls, way too loud for the short distance between them.

Steve hesitates a moment before taking a breath deep enough that his shoulders heave with it and turning back around.

“You don’t have to say anything, Tony,” he says quietly. “I don’t expect anything from you. How I feel is on me, and I’m genuinely sorry for making you uncomfortable.”

“You haven’t,” Tony rushes to reassure him. “It just took me a stupidly long time to figure out what you meant, but I-” Steve seems like he’s on the verge of trying to leave again, without waiting for Tony to finish, which is why he ends up interrupting himself to blurt out, “Have dinner with me.”

“What?”

“Have dinner with me,” Tony repeats; he’s already put the invitation out there, so there’s really no point in him trying to pretty it up now, but he does elaborate on it. “Tonight, just the two of us. We can get dressed up, go someplace nice, see how it goes?”

“You really don’t have to,” Steve says, looking a hell of a lot less happy about the suggestion than Tony would have expected.

“I haven’t done anything because I have to since I was fifteen, Steve, and that was to do with college course requirements,” Tony reassures him. “I’m not saying I’m okay with you trying to keep me safe from the world or whatever, and your idea of acceptable ways to woo someone could do with some work, but dinner? That, I’d be more than happy with.”

Steve just looks at him for a long moment, assessing and reassessing, and then, eventually, he smiles. “Dinner,” he says softly. “Meet me in the lobby at seven?”

“I’ll be there with bells on,” Tony answers, which is a dumb expression, one he’s never used before in his life and would be very happy never to use again. Still, it makes Steve grin at him, so Tony thinks he can forgive himself for saying it, just this once.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone wants to, you can find me on tumblr [@dreaminglypeach](https://dreaminglypeach.tumblr.com/).


End file.
